Southern Fried Revenge
by Tristan Journey
Summary: Chell had never told Felicity her back story, and it turns out, her best friend was hiding something as well. Rated T, because I actually am paranoid.
1. Nightmares

**Aside from ****_Demons of Her Own_****, this is my other story that's actually interesting (opinion) and lengthy, marginally. It may have some spelling errors, though I try to fix those. The name is currently pretty stupid, excuse it for the moment. Or forever. (First Portal Fanfic!) Enjoy!**

Her eyes flew open, panic stinging her every nerve for a split second. _Shwerr. _The glass chrysalis she was encompassed in slid open, the faint chemical scent of adrenal vapor flooded the air, filling her with energy and bad memories.

Chell jolted from her cryogenic cocoon with a start. She looked around, discovering the glass box was lit by only a single spotlight at the center of the ceiling, darkness swallowing up the surrounding room.

A ragged, mechanical chuckle creeped in through a hidden speaker, feminine, robotic. The line was delivered in the only way Chell was familiar with, cloaked in a thick layer of malice.

_"I thought I told you to leave for good." _The condescending voice said. _"You must really, really love to test." _A circular steel door appeared, unlocked, filling the room with an eerie red glow. A dark, featureless figure materialized in the door frame, like a solid silhouette, creeping towards the test subject.

As it got closer, she figured it was a man. The arms were pulled against its sides, tangled in red wires. The face slowly appeared as a black skull, a faint blue glow where the eyes should have been.

"Don't think I'm not on to you, too, lady." Said an ever so familiar voice. The figure inched closer, until it was face to face with Chell.

"I despise you," a large metal panel with spikes welded onto it slammed down 20 feet behind her, in a hall that had just appeared, unnoticed before. "I loathe you," another deadly plate planted itself even closer. "You awful," _slam, _"smugly quiet," _slam, _too close for comfort. She couldn't run in either direction. Couldn't speak. "jumpsuited," a smaller plate touched down in that one. She looked up, and looming above her head was a final mashy-spike plate, controlled by this figure. When looked back, it was as if she was staring into the eyes of death and betrayal itself. "MONSTER OF A WOMAN!" He threw his arms up, and the panel descended suddenly. Then there was darkness. The British voice changed tone and croaked one last thing, words she'd never heard in his voice.

"I'm so, so sorry."

Chell started awake. She threw herself into a sitting position, startling her friend. She writhed in the thick, sticky bedsheets before yanking them off her mattress completely.

"Oh my goodness, are you okay?" Her southern friend said in a hushed voice, eyes wide with worry. Chell's dilated pupils darted around the room, making sure she was awake, not in another dream. It had happened before, and it was terrifying. She whipped her head around to the lady, who was wearing modest, pink laced sleepwear. The bags under her eyes told Chell that she was up awhile earlier, probably making sure the former test subject was okay.

Chell felt her friend's hand cool clasp around her wrist, trying to calm her.

"Yes." She finally said, voice shaky. "I-I'm fine, Felicity."

Felicity threw her hand to the base of her neck, relieved.

"Oh thank Heavens, I almost thought you had another one of your panic attacks again." Chell shook her head slightly.

"I'm alright, you can go back to bed. Thanks." The lady in pink grimaced, before letting go of her friend's wrist and leaving the bedroom.

She glanced at the wall clock, which read 2:45. Moonlight shown in through the window, sending a cascading wave of increasingly fuzzy light carved by the spaces in the blinds. Wrinkles and folds in the bedsheets and her clothing warped the luminescence into odd-looking curves, shadows from the same beam danced across the walls and made funny shapes, like 2 dimensional modern art.

The cool air from the rest of the room sent chills down Chell's back, temperature varying too quickly. It was even colder against her skin since she had jumped up right after her nightmare caused her to break into a cold sweat.

She pulled the sheets back over herself, trying to, hopefully, return to a peaceful slumber. Once her mind settled and her heartbeat began to thump in sync with the clock ticking, she fell asleep.

Nightmares are exhausting.

Chell didn't remember waking up the next morning. All she knew what that she was awake, and at least she was alive. It was definitely something to be thankful for, the ability to get out of bed was a privilege denied to many. Like the victims of the sour part of the Long Sleep.

The dim moonlight had changed to soft sunrays. Chell finally willed herself to get out of bed. The second her feet touched the floor, even though it was carpet, it was like an icy mist had creeped in over night and settled on the ground.

Freezing cold. She pulled the blinds open, and the radiance came pouring into the room, crisp, yellow-orange and bright. Chell turned to grab her robe, but a stark blast of light stung her eyes and she paused, throwing a hand up. It was her telescope, reflecting the morning rays.

It was shiny, lustrous. The brass had been polished by someone. It hadn't been professionally cleaned in at least a year or so, and she wondered why now.

Chell had gotten that telescope at least 2 and a half years ago, from a bookstore owner in the town, Greg Havvoc. She used it often, stargazing was a sort of profession of hers. The only thing Chell was worried about when peering through the magnified lens was that she might see Him. Or not.

The theory that He might still be in space, and the ones that he may not, both frightened her. She didn't want him to die because of her, crushed by debris, crashed into the surface of the moon, it would terrible. Then again, she did want him to have some sort of...punishment for what he had done.

The rhythmic ticking of the wall clock pulled her back to reality. It was 6:00 AM. Chell wasn't going back to sleep, that was for sure. She never could after this hour.

Felicity was slumped on the couch, curlers in her hair, still in her pajamas.

"Hey, Chell." She said, lackadaisically. "We have biscuit-bombs from yesterday."

Leftovers? Felicity not cooking? She was always cooking.

"Are you okay?" Chell asked, walking towards the fridge.

"Eh." The lady held up a small picture of someone, she would never let Chell see it, though. She then let her head fall back on the couch. Chell turned to her friend, grimaced. This was a strange mood for Felicity, since she was usually cheerful.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothin'." She glanced at the picture once more, then set it in a small chest beside the sofa, sighing. "Nothin', really." She was dead tired, and just as she was suddenly falling asleep, her head popped back up. "The coffee shop!"

Felicity rushed back upstairs to her room. Chell knew the manner of the lady and look on her face too well, her friend was mourning someone. Who, she had no idea. The southerner never let her see that picture of her mystery friend.

Chell was already dressed before she had come downstairs, so she patiently waited on her roommate, cream cheese bagel in hand.

"Goodness, goodness, goodness, goodness…" Felicity repeated in a hurry as she stepped through the door, almost forgetting her one-feathered bowler-hat on the way out. Chell didn't work full time at her friend's coffee shop, so she had time to kill and left after she finished her bagel.

The coffee shop, _Cafe et Scelerisque, _was only a block away, luckily for Felicity, who showcased this java-bean haven as her pride and joy. The lady was also very interested in foreign culture, hence the latin name (though Felicity would argue occasionally that the first part could also mean the same in French).

When Chell stepped inside the shop, the strong aroma of freshly-ground coffee pierced her senses. It was powerful at first, but took only a minute to get used to, and after that it was a bit more pleasant.

Chell sighed. There was no place else she would rather be, other than Greg's bookstore, which was a second on her list of safe-havens.

She sat back in a black wire-framed chair, which was sitting in the little sunlight that shone through the window during the beginning of another harsh Michigan winter.

Chell wasn't brain damaged. She knew that for a fact. Nor was she mute, fat, or any other of the passive-aggressive attributes that _She_ had noted about her in the facility.

Chell didn't know exactly if she was adopted, or if she would care if she was. Even without any blood-relatives, the small town of Sunset Creek had plenty of friendly faces that welcomed her warmly when she walked (or waddled, mostly) day and night over 20 miles to the nearest civilization. It wasn't much, but to Chell, it was absolute heaven, and she had plenty enough to entertain herself. Stargazing for one, better at the Dark Sky park, where the skies were so clear you could glance into the infinity of space. This time, without being threatened to be pulled into it.

Chell's list of friends was short, other than Greg and, well, Felicity, who was her closest. She liked it that way. Quality, not quantity. You could have 20 'friends' and none of them would be faithful, but one friend whose hands you could put your life in. She didn't care if somebody didn't like her, she had been to Hell and back twice, and defeated Satan both times in the process. Nothing could really bother after _that _whole ordeal.

Felicity had helped Chell so much, even without knowing her background. Neither of them really had shared their backstories, even in the 3 and a half, almost 4 years they had known each other.

The brass bell above the door sang cheerfully, welcoming a customer, beginning the work day.

The shop was never very slow, but today it felt especially lengthy as Chell waited for it to close. The day before she had left her new, detachable ultra-zoom telescope lens in the attic of the shop, and couldn't go up there until the coffee beans were moved out of the way and used up.

"How's my favorite neice doing?" Greg enveloped Felicity in a hug when she went to greet her uncle. He was a big man, in his mid-50's, hair graying from it's original brown, but he still looked tough as nails.

"I'm doin' good." She replied cheerfully, then commented on a new shipment of books he had received. "Sell any more of those new Encyclopedia Britannicas?"

"Actually," He said, sitting down in chair that was almost too small for him. "I did. 3 of them! This little girl, had to be at least 10, walked in and started lookin' for the most complex books you could think of." He chuckled. "As you could imagine, she went straight for that encyclopedia like it was free candy. A couple of others grabbed 'em too."

"Oh my stars, 3 sold on the first day in stock." Felicity smiled.

Chell wiped the coffee grounds off of her hands on her dark green apron, re-stocking a grinding machine with java beans. "Well, if you aren't gonna order something, I'm gonna have to kick you out." She joked, stirring up a chuckle from Greg and Felicity.

"No, please, I'll take a premium dark roast."  
"On the house." Felicity winked.

"Oh, no, you don't have to do that. I'll pay for this magical stuff!" Greg offered.

"Remember what we said about relative discounts, Felicity." Chell said, smiling. Felicity made a face, rolling her eyes up for a second.

"Fine, fine. That'll be three-fifty."

"Anything for this coffee." Greg chuckled, pulling his wallet from his pocket.

{~~~}

Chell set a few coffee bean bags aside from the door to the attic, and ran upstairs. It was mostly finished, not exactly a totally dusty extra room. It was cozy. She spotted the lens in the moonlight that was streaming in through the one small window, and something else was reflecting the light, too. It was whatever the lens was sitting on top of, old sheets pulled away from the corner of the box.

Her companion cube.

It was one of her many things she wouldn't show Felicity, and there was a pair of long-fall boots hidden somewhere, too. She slipped the empty Java bean sacks back over the cube to conceal it, hoping to never see it outside again, like the last time it was presented to her. She wondered...

Chell set the telescope lens aside and began to pull the covering off of the cube. It was so, so silent when she finally could see it. It was beaten up, covered in dirt and previously smouldering dust, and there were a few marks were an energy pellet had hit it. She chuckled briefly, running her thumb over the pink heart that was plastered to its front.

"I guess we both have our scars." Chell said to it, like an old friend, even though it couldn't hear her. And she really hoped it didn't respond.

It brought back so many memories of that place though, of _Her, _the loathed testing, Wheat-

Don't, She thought. Stop. I don't need this. The core was a hard subject to think about for her, torn on whether she would forgive him or not, if he ever came back. That would never happen, though.

It was funny, Chell was utterly furious with him, but still didn't know what she would do if she knew that something happened to him.

_He was your friend._ Chell slouched in her standing position.

I know, she thought.

_You knew him._

In what way, though? She had only known him for a day or two, anyhow.

_You _knew _him. That _thing _wasn't him._

Was it?

_No._

No. It wasn't him. It was the mainframe.

_Exactly. _She _was slightly nicer as a potato. He was pretty nice -marginally- without the power. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely._

Chell paused. That was right. She'd had this mental conversation _countless _times (no matter how hard she tried not to), and never made up her mind. It had been almost _4 years_.

_You can't hold onto this for so long. _

I know, I know, but there's this _weird _feeling about it, like-

_You miss him._ Chell did a double-take. She did.

"Chell," Felicity called from downstairs, in the shop. "Find what you were lookin' for?"

She paused, smiled briefly. "I did."


	2. The Return

"SPAAACE!" The yellow-eyed core chirped. "Ooh, ooh, I see the space cops. In their spaceship. In SPACE!"

Wheatley was not enjoying his starry exile. He shut his optic tightly, handles drooping inward, wishing it could block out the irritating, incessant space-only monologue. He sighed, mechanically, raggedly. He might have enjoyed the scenery of the cosmos, if it weren't for his pathologically obsessed companion's rambling and the fact that his vision was split into halves by his cracked optic.

"Hey. Hey. Hey space buddy." The Space Core puffed.

"It's not '_Space buddy', _it's-,"

"Ooh, ooh, ooh. I know a story. About space. Wanna hear it? Space Buddy? Pleeease pleasepleaseplease-,"

"YES! Fine, what is your 'space story'?" Wheatley replied, impatiently. He had a feeling he knew the tale already.

"So, so, once upon a time there was a spaceship, and it flew through space." _Ohh, no. Not again. _

He tried to ignore it. But, unfortunately for him, he had no hands to cover his audio-input-processors. Ears. Whatever you could call them. He would usually try to tune out the Space core, which was hard to do, since the thing yapped in an unusually _loud _volume. Sometimes when it got so loud that Wheatley couldn't think straight, he was forced to listen. It was one of the only things he could do in space for five years. At least Pluto didn't get bored out here. That's what he decided to call the Space core, since he rambled about the history of space and the Greek Mythology based around it, Wheatley chose a fitting name. Well, he actually chose it randomly, after the Core had listed so many names of planets.

Sometimes Wheatley would count the planets and stars. Mentally arrange them in alphabetical order, distribute Jupiter's moons equally among them, he would play mind games (though he didn't actually do any of them correctly, considering the fact that he didn't even know the alphabet in order by heart) involving anything he could see. On the slowest days he might count exactly how many spins it took to revolve around the moon, since he was in fact flipping clockwise, very slowly. It took very, very, many rotations, he concluded.

Almost every time Wheatley counted something, though, he would have to start over, because of the Space core's constant flood of nearly incoherent sayings.

But space wasn't all that bad. Really, it was boring after a while, but every time he switched out of sleep mode, the stars and far-off galaxies dazzled him. Just the mere idea of exactly _how many _stars and galaxies there were, it boggled his digital mind. At least with Pluto here he actually knew what he was looking at, the names of the constellations and the planets, and how many there really were. The Space core did once tell him something actually helpful, to some extent, and that was how many galaxies mankind had discovered that floated about space.

Around 100 billion, Pluto had informed him, in his crazy obsessed way.

For once, Wheatley tuned in to Space core fm.

"-And the Space princess defeated the Space Queen with the Space prince, who took her throne, but then the Space prince got paranoid and went crazy and attacked the Space princess-,"

"Hey!" Wheatley called out in alarm. Pluto had changed the storyline, and it was now a terrifyingly familiar one.

"You changed it, I thought the 'Space princess' and the 'Space prince' lived happily ever after! What're you crazy mate, going about and making him attack the poor girl!"

He knew this would happen eventually. Corrupt cores tended to take information and bend it, or twist it into something else. Pluto didn't realize he was doing it, because he was corrupt.

Every time something small like that happened, it send his weak, digital mind into override. About her. About what he did. He could never stop thinking about it, wishing he could apologize, and wondering if she ever _did _somehow forgive him, if he would forgive himself. His memories haunted him with walking cubes and screaming and voices and _The Itch_. He would have helped her. That's all Wheatley ever wanted to do, was to help. To feel like he wasn't just a mistake, or a Moron. He wanted to feel needed.

And for once, he did feel needed. But then he threw it all away, _like an idiot. _He thought. _I'm such a bloody Moron. _

But he kept telling himself it wasn't his fault.

Yeah, it wasn't his fault, it was the mainframe. Being connected to that chassis, it controlled him. He didn't think about the possible downsides at all beforehand, he just wanted to _leave_.

But the Super Computer he was hooked up to flooded him with power, and his mind with voices. Little voices telling him _He wasn't worthless, _and _He could control_ _everything! _And _YOU did this! Weak little Wheatley DID THIS. He was a bloody KING._

And Wheatley listened. Like the Moron _She _said he was built to be, he listened to insecure, "_go ahead" _little consciousness that talked to him constantly. But he did believe that it wasn't his fault. Because the moment he was pulled out of the chassis and into space, he could feel the psychological chaos disappear. Because in that split second in the void, all he wanted to do was live. Live to help her escape, to make everything better. _To make sure she was alright. _Then again, panic had taken over and instead of apologizing in the split last second he told to her to catch him, or to let go herself.

The Space core then started to babble about his imaginary Space father, talking to himself.

Wheatley sighed. Again. "Ohh, man alive, you really like space, don't you?"

"YESSSS!" The Core screeched.

"Oh, blimey- I didn't realize you liked it _that_-,"

"It's a spaceship! HELLO SPACESHIP!"

Oh. Well, this was great. _Just great. _Pluto's beginning to hallucinate, Wheatley thought. If that was even possible, for a robot to hallucinate.

The entire time, Wheatley had been slowly rotating clockwise. By the time he finished his train of thought, he had turned fully, and saw it. The Space shuttle.

"Oh, Pluto, you aren't going mad! Yes! We're saved! Ohh, God, yes, we're s-," He suddenly noticed the logo on one of the rocket boosters. It was an Aperture Device. Wheatley didn't know if he should be relieved, or terrified out of his mind. The shuttle neared the cores, a little over 20 feet away, before the properly suited man with the helmet came out.

"HEY! ASTRONAUT! IN SPACE! I'M IN SPACE!" The Space core shrieked with his own twisted excitement for the cosmos.

"Hey! Are-are you here to save us? Oh, God, please tell me you're here to help us!" His handles flailed anxiously.

"You could say I'm bringing you back to Earth." The man's voice finally spoke, though it slightly muffled and it sounded as if it was coming from an intercom that didn't work to its fullest.

"You-you could say? What does that mean, like directly, please, this time, are you saving us, or- um..." Wheatley paused as the astronaut grabbed his top handle, as well as "Pluto's", and was pulled back to the space-ship. The air-tight outer door shut with a _fwip, _And the astronaut pulled off his helmet, entering the main compartment of the shuttle through yet another air-tight door.

"So-so really, you're here to help? Seriously, I must be in sleep mode! Dreaming! Well, not that Cores can actually dream, I mean, figure of speech obviously- but, wow! This is amazing! I thought I'd just _die _out here if somebody didn't come out here and help us, because, God, just listening to Pluto, Space core, yappin' about this whole mess, doesn't make a whole lot of sense most of the time. Wow, am I glad to see another face-er, not another, because neither me or Spacey here have _actual _faces, but-,"

"_When does it shut up?" _A different voice commented. A second astronaut sat beside the one that retrieved the cores, rubbing his forehead tiredly. His tone alone caught Wheatley off guard.

"Well, _excuse me, _I've only been in space with nothing but Pluto for- for, well, _years, _and you two are the only sentient beings I've seen in ages! God! That's bloody _rude _if you ask me! I was on the verge of dying until you came along! Almost dying, really-," The astronauts snickered.

"What's so funny to you?" Wheatley snapped in an offended tone.

"So _this _is what She was talking about." The first guy said quietly to the second.

"What do you mean, She-," It suddenly dawned on Wheatley. These were not his kind rescuers from Aperture. These were _Her _little worker bees, doing her work for her.

"Oh-oh God."


	3. The Yellow-Eyed Sociopath

"_Welcome back. I hope you enjoyed being thrown into space by the only friend you had. Which you betrayed_." _Her _voice echoed off the walls of her massive, black-walled chamber, which the cores were being lowered into from the ceiling. Wheatley's optic shrunk to a pinpoint, darting around the room, Space core humming a silly tune.

"Uh, er...hallo again! I-I did have a good time in space. So many good times. Psh, too many to- um, to count," He tried, in vain, to conceal his paralyzing fear. He was back here. Oh, he was back in this bloody asylum. He would have rather crash landed in the Sahara and had his gears melt until he stopped functioning. Or better yet, pecked to death by birds. Okay, _maybe _not that. Not the birds. This is better.

"_Oh? Do share._" Her voice was exactly like he remembered it, cold, monotonous.

"Oh. Well, um…"

"_I bet you're wondering why I brought you back here._" She cut him off.

"Actually, that _did_ come to mind. Um. Why-why did you bring me back?" She swung close to Wheatley, who was tightly clutched in her metal claw, suspended 15 feet above the floor. Her yellow optic glared into his, so bright that his faulty visual processors began to fritz.

"_Because I hate you._" If he was human, he would have swallowed.

"Right. Um...understandable." He swiveled his optic in a slight nod.

"_I despise you beyond comprehension. I hated you the second they attached you to my mainframe, I hate you in this very moment, and I had hoped you had put me in a lemon so that I would burst into flames and that whole mess would be over._"

"Oh." Wheatley twitched, sparks shooting from a defective gear somewhere beneath his metal shell. He had no words, for once. He was going to die. Right here, in this nightmaric place.

"_You think I'm going to kill you._" She tilted her head, whatever the mechanic equivalent, amused. "_You really are an idiot. No surprise there._"

"What?" He wondered. She wasn't going to kill him? _Really?_

"_There are things that are much worse than death, you know. And every one of those things that you could list, you deserve._" She chuckled maliciously. "_Let's name one, shall we?_"

{~~~}

After searching the facility for the perfect revenge, She had found something fitting. An old project, ditched due to "low investor confidence". Hidden in the main digital storage vault, was the file for it. A concept at the time, now a reality. In fact, it was such an amazing find, She got giddy.

It was a while before his practical torture was complete, but it was not yet over. The Space core GLaDOS had no interest in, so She threw him into the astronomy wing. Unlucky for Her, cores connected to her mainframe wirelessly. They were programmed to do so.

There was a high pitched chime, signaling that the mind transfer process was complete. Two metal claws on rails pulled him into her chamber by his arms. Wheatley fell to his knees once they released him.

He held a hand in front of face, studying in bewilderment, struggled to speak for a moment.

"Wh-what the..._bloody hell _have you done to me?" Wheatley was angrier than She'd ever seen him before. He was _furious. _"I... am going to-to _kill _you for this." He struggled to breath.

It was entertaining.

"_Well that would be tremendously ambitious of you._" She chuckled. "_Looks like _you're _the 'smelly human' this time. Like it?_" She said, caustically.

{~~~}

"You're a bloody sociopath, you know that." Wheatley attempted to stand, only to fall back down to the cold floor. He was tall, no doubt about it, clad in orange Aperture test-subject wear, and thin-framed glasses. Thinning light brown hair, though he only looked 28-32. The first thing he noticed about being human was that he had an actual sense of smell. The scent of cleaning product and machine grease hit him like a brick.

"What _is _that?"

"_Your sense of smell, moron." _She hissed, as if reading his mind. He glared at her, more seriously than ever, especially now having the capability to do so with full facial expression. The realization that he was unconsciously breathing also startled him. Wheatley held his hands to his face, curiously, and in a split second his anger turned to crippling fear.

"Turn me back." He wrapped his arms around himself, curling up on the floor. "Turn me back now, you-you _witch_." He could almost feel Her glaring at him. "I'm-I'm sorry, no, please do make me a core again. Please, I'll do anything. I can't stand this."

A moment passed, and he realised that She was enjoying this. His torture. "Okay, very, um, very funny, haha, now please change me back." He swallowed, an instant human reaction that he didn't even think about doing. "Please?"

"_I haven't had this much entertainment for years. You don't think I'll stop _this _show so soon, do you? Besides, this would make for a perfect test. Oh, that reminds me. Your first test will begin shortly. One moment._" An elevator descended from the ceiling slowly.

"You're-you're letting me go?" He asked softly, hopefully. All She did was snicker in that mechanical tone of hers.

"_Of course I'm not just going to let you off the hook like _that, _moron._"

"I'm not a moron." Wheatley whispered to himself.

"_Science over opinion, you are a moron. It's right here, in black and white. On your file. Three of your spectators repeatedly noted, 'An absolute moron, unfit for simple tasks. Or friends.'_" The elevator hissed to a stop once it slid to the floor. "_Oh look, your first test is about to begin. Please step into the elevator, unless you're such an idiot that you can't even use something as simple as a human avatar. I should have known._"

Wheatley thought for a moment. "My file didn't really say that." He said, with a hint of doubt. "If you're so smart, what does yours say?"

"_It says that I am the most intelligent sentient super-computer to ever be built, and that I am also perfect. Please step into the elevator._" She replied.

"Where-um, where does it go, though?" Wheatley couldn't even walk on his own two feet yet, he might as well know the point of learning to do so.

He could tell that She was getting exasperated. "_To your test. How many times do I have to explain this? You must be a moron with short-term memory._" The elevator shifted slightly upwards, then settled back to its position. "_Get in the elevator, you ignoramus._"

"I would get in the bloody lift if I knew how to _move._" Wheatley held his right arm out. "Er, well if I knew how to walk, I mean. I can move...that thing. Arm."

The machine narrowed her yellow optic into a glare. "_It isn't my fault that you're the biggest idiot on the face of the Earth. As much as I would love to now, I can't kill you._" She sighed, extremely annoyed. "_I need you for this test. Work it out._" Before he could say anything else, She was already scanning a monitor on which an orange cat was stuffing his face with lasagna.

Wheatley had a hard time figuring out how shift his own weight to a different position. He just about hit himself in the face with his own knee trying to stand.

"Man _alive, _this is bloody difficult." He muttered to himself under his breath.

"_Having fun, are we?_" _She _was back again after his unspoken allotted 5 minutes.

He scoffed. "Not _exactly _the word I would choose, 'fun', if I'm honest."

"_It's fun for _me_._" She remarked, with a caustic and viscous tone. He was almost surprised at her blatancy. "_I love watching you struggle to do simple tasks. Today has been the most entertaining day of my life. Except for Bring Your Daughter to Work Day, that was amusing as well._"

_Sadistic sociopath._ Wheatley thought.

Suddenly the lights went out.

"_What-_," She paused. "_Oh, those _idiots_._" Her yellow optic glared into his eyes, blindingly so, when She turned back around. "_One moment._"

In the minute She was distracted, Wheatley managed to get to his feet for the first time. His knees were shaking, and he instinctively held out his arms to keep balanced.

"Heh-," He stumbled, but reacted quickly enough to catch himself. "H-ha! I'm- I'm standing! In your _face,_ you absolute pig!" He was suddenly beyond glad that She was preoccupied. "Oh, thank God She didn't hear that."

"_I did._" A sudden shock of energy rippled through Wheatley's right arm, making him flinch violently. He didn't even realize that the lights had turned back on.

"Agh!" He cringed. "Did-did you just bloody _electrocute _me?"

_"More or less._" If She could smirk, She probably would have. "_I see you've managed to master the art of standing as a human._" There was a pre-recorded sequence of clapping that went three times. _Clap, clap, clap._ "_Congratulations. Let's see if you can walk. This should be good._" She said, in an incomprehensibly _bored _tone.

Wheatley glared at her, and then attempted to take a first step.

"Uh...agh!" He didn't even have time to put his hands in front of his face, and ended up cracking the frame of his glasses. He also got very sore nose and cheekbone.

"_I don't have all day, you know._" He lifted himself onto his elbows.

"Oi, this is going to be the worst."


End file.
